About mentorsme

mentorsme.co.uk is Britain’s first online gateway for small and medium-sized enterprises looking for mentoring services.

The free site offers businesses access to a list of quality-assured business mentoring organisations across Britain. An easy-to-use search engine allows businesses to refine their searches according to the life stage of their business and their location in Britain.

Our objective is to help businesses find a mentoring organisation to suit their needs in a fast and easy way.

The site also allows business professionals to offer their services as a business mentor via the mentoring organisations listed. Aspiring mentors may want to work in a particular area of Britain and have a particular area of expertise to offer. Our search engine allows them to locate mentoring organisations that are the closest match to their profile.

mentorsme.co.uk also aims to raise awareness about the benefits of business mentoring through its library of online resources, which includes articles about mentoring and case studies of successful business mentoring relationships.

mentorsme.co.uk is operated by the Business Finance Taskforce, which has been set up by the British Bankers’ Association and is made up of five banks: Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander. The taskforce was established to help businesses access the finance they need to grow.

How to be part of mentorsme.co.uk

The Portal is intended to provide interested parties with a single, easy to use search engine to locate organisations that provide mentor services to small businesses and those interested in starting a business.

Our aim is to provide users with access to all existing mentoring organisations and networks under one umbrella, whilst not duplicating or competing with the identities, relationships and services that such organisations already provide.

If your organisation is interested in joining the portal please read the guidance notes below before completing the questionnaire.

Your application will be assessed by SFEDI.

SFEDI was established in 1996 as the Enterprise Standards Setting Body, and is responsible for researching, developing, maintaining and quality assuring individual and organisational standards for Business Mentoring. SFEDI has been working to develop a quality assurance framework for Mentoring Organisations appearing on mentorsme.co.uk and have now been appointed to carry out assessment against these standards.

Guidance notes for completing the questionnaire.

Mentorsme.co.uk welcomes applications from businesses that carry out mentoring services

And that you can provide evidence that your organisation is offering such a service

You will need to show evidence that you have mentors who have expertise in mentoring small businesses. This will include a robust and relevant selection, recruitment and induction programme

You will need to provide sufficient evidence of delivering a consistent quality mentoring offer

It is important that you have enough mentors in your organisation to be able to respond to requests for mentoring services from a large number of mentees

Feel free to include further evidence that might support your application – case studies, testimonials, codes of conduct etc

Your completed questionnaire will be forwarded to SFEDI who will assess your application against quality standards that have been set for mentorsme.co.uk

SFEDI’s assessment will initially take into consideration the responses to the questions posed in the questionnaire, additional evidence supplied to support responses, information available to view on your company website and the self certification checklist

The assessment process will take between 4/5 weeks.

Download and complete the questionnaire then return it to: media@betterbusinessfinance.co.uk

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